Of everything currently in the collection, this is the stone the change was made for. At 1.96 carats out of Malyshevo, it carries an elongated cushion silhouette rarely seen at this weight — most rough this shape is cut down to a standard oval or cushion long before it reaches this size, so keeping the form intact was a deliberate choice by the cutter. The color earns the shape’s attention: a deep bluish green in daylight gives way to a saturated, unambiguous purple under incandescent light, the kind of full, decisive swing that alexandrite is famous for and that most stones sold under the name only approximate. This is Ural material doing exactly what put the Urals on the map in 1830 — and doing it in a cut you don’t often get the chance to offer.
